JOYCE CAROL OATES: I think I'm one of those writers with a strong visual sense. And I get great happiness and excitement from replicating the physical world, particularly the world of nature. I'm from upstate New York. I was raised on a farm. The first 18 years of my life, I lived in a farm. And so I really like to set stories in that kind of rural landscape and put people in that setting that are representative of the setting.
And I'm particularly interested in women and girls-- the lives of women and girls-- and, sometimes, the consequence of violence in fairly domestic, ordinary life. What are the consequences for the survivors? And I look upon people as being very strong and resilient. And we often don't know how strong we are until we're put to the test.